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☆ Joe Biden to attend $25,000 per person fundraiser during NYC campaign cash blitz
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Brian Schwartz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

US President Joe Biden speaks about the creation of new manufacturing jobs at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, April 25, 2023. A Biden campaign spokesman declined to comment. An NBC News poll shows 46% of the Republican primary voters support Trump over other declared and potential rivals, including former Florida Gov. The majority of those surveyed said they would prefer that neither Biden nor Trump run for president. Trump and Biden combined to raise almost $2 billion during the 2020 election cycle, according to data from OpenSecrets.

☆ Reid Hoffman's new AI startup Inflection launches ChatGPT-like chatbot
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Krystal Hu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

May 2 (Reuters) - Inflection AI, the AI startup founded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and former Deepmind (GOOGL.O) researcher Mustafa Suleyman, has released its first AI chatbot product, the company said on Tuesday. Similar to the viral chatbot ChatGPT, Inflection's AI chatbot, named Pi, uses generative AI technology to interact with users through conversations, in which people can ask questions and share interests. Inflection AI said it developed the technology in-house and its Pi chatbot is built on prioritizing human conversations with a high level of emotional intelligence. Pi uses user data, including conversational content, to train its AI systems, according to its terms of service. Chatbot powered by generative AI technology has become a crowded field since OpenAI's ChatGPT burst into the scene last November.

NEW YORK, May 1 (Reuters) - E. Jean Carroll returned to the witness stand in her rape and defamation civil case against Donald Trump, after the judge denied a defense request for a mistrial. Trump's lawyer Joe Tacopina began cross-examining Carroll for a second day, hoping to show jurors inconsistencies or holes in her claims against the former U.S. president. In seeking a mistrial, Tacopina wrote an 18-page letter early on Monday accusing U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of bias against Trump. Trump's lawyer also challenged Kaplan's statement that Trump might be "sailing in harm's way" after his son Eric Trump discussed on Twitter how LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman was helping fund Carroll's case. TRUMP NOT ATTENDING TRIALA businessman-turned-politician, Trump has not attended Carroll's trial, and on Monday was in Scotland for a short trip to visit his golf courses there and eventually in Ireland.

☆ Billionaire LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman reveals 2 Buddhist principles that shape his worldview and help him navigate failure
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

In an interview with The Generalist, Hoffman said he's been most influenced by Buddha. Hoffman also said in the interview that Aristotle initially inspired him to study philosophy. Hoffman, who cofounded LinkedIn, announced he was stepping down from the board of OpenAI last month. Hoffman holds a master's degree in philosophy from Oxford and planned to go into academia at one point. Hoffman, who calls himself an "accidental technologist," credits his philosophical instincts as the reason he is in the industry.

"I'm here because Trump raped me," Carroll testified. Trump's posts mentioned two issues that Judge Lewis Kaplan had warned parties in the trial not to mention to jurors. Carroll alleges Trump assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in or around 1996. In his first Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump wrote, "The E. Jean Carroll case, Ms. Bergdorf Goodman, is a made up SCAM. "Just look at her CNN interview before & after the commercial break - Like a different person," Trump wrote, referring to an interview Carroll gave CNN about the lawsuit.

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman contributed money to a nonprofit funding E. Jean Carroll's rape lawsuit against Trump. The judge said Wednesday that jurors couldn't hear evidence related to his funding of the case. The issue of whether billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman contributed money towards E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit against the former president, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said, "would be prejudicial" because it has no bearing on Carroll's allegations. "The whole subject of litigation funding is precluded," the judge said Wednesday afternoon in a downtown Manhattan courtroom. The funding issue had no bearing on the merits of Carroll's claims, Kaplan said earlier.

☆ Big money donors rally behind Biden as he launches his reelection bid
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Brian Schwartz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Big donors in the business world started rallying around President Joe Biden soon after he announced Tuesday that he's running for reelection next year. A Biden campaign spokesperson didn't return a request for comment before publication. Katzenberg told CNBC in an exclusive interview Tuesday night that he believes the Biden campaign will raise more this time around than in 2020. Biden's campaign raised over $400 million from donors that gave under $200 during his last run for president, according to OpenSecrets. Venture capitalist Ron Conway has told friends he will help the president's campaign, according to a person close to him.

☆ Trump's rape trial brought by E. Jean Carroll starts Tuesday in Manhattan. The case centers around accusations from the 1990s
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Ashley Collman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Carroll has accused Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman changing room in the mid-1990s. Carroll is asking for Trump to retract his statements and for a jury to award her unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. Carroll says their encounter started off playful, with Trump asking Carroll to help him pick out a gift for a female friend. Eva Deitch for The Washington Post via Getty ImagesTrump's lawyers are likely to try and paint Carroll's lawsuit as a political witch hunt. Trump's lawyers asked to delay the trial a month so that they could probe Hoffman's involvement more, but that request was denied, though Kaplan allowed Trump's legal team to conduct another deposition with Carroll before the trial starts.

☆ Judge seals filings over whether billionaire Democratic donor is bankrolling E. Jean Carroll's rape lawsuit against Trump
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Jacob Shamsian | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

E. Jean Carroll's rape lawsuit against former President Donald Trump goes to trial next week. A federal judge sealed documents related to whether billionaire Reid Hoffman funded Carroll's suit. Alina Habba, an attorney representing Trump in the lawsuit, told Insider she would oppose the decision. On April 13, Habba asked Judge Kaplan (who is not related to Carroll's lawyer) again to delay the trial and reopen the discovery process in the case. Trump's attorneys haven't yet said whether the former president will attend the trial, and Judge Kaplan isn't forcing him to.

☆ Twitter users including Justin Bieber, Bill Gates, and Kim Kardashian are seeing their blue checkmarks disappear as Elon Musk charges $8 a month for verified accounts
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Kate Duffy | Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter appeared to start removing legacy blue checkmarks from many accounts on Thursday. Some Twitter users are watching their legacy blue checkmarks disappear from their accounts as Elon Musk implements an $8 monthly subscription program. Notable business figures including Bill Gates, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and "Shark Tank" star Barbara Corcoran no longer showed blue checkmarks on their Twitter accounts Thursday afternoon. The only way users can keep their blue checkmarks is to sign up to Twitter Blue, a subscription program that costs $8 a month. Twitter Blue has sparked controversy since it was rolled out.

☆ A judge blamed Trump for the 'media frenzy' he used as an excuse to try to delay his rape trial
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Ashley Collman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A judge denied Donald Trump's bid to delay E. Jean Carroll's rape trial because of his indictment. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan expressed concern the request was "another delay tactic" by the former president. US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said some of the so-called media frenzy had been caused by Trump himself. The judge allowed a brief reopening of discovery but denied Trump's request to delay the trial. Carroll "is now over 79 years of age and is entitled to her day in court just as both parties are entitled to a fair trial," Kaplan wrote.

☆ I've been building popular tech products like Tome since I became my family's breadwinner at 15 years old. I've learned you never know how people are going to use your creation.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-15 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Keith Peiris is the co-founder of Tome, a storytelling tool that uses generative AI models like GPT-4 and Dall-E-2. At the same time, I also learned that no one uses your tools the way you envisioned. The truth is that everyone uses tools differently, so you need to build them in a permissive way. When we started building Tome in the early days of the pandemic, my cofounder, Henri Liriani, and I thought we were building for someone we knew. Now, they're using Tome, which is a use case I had never even thought about.

They said the involvement of Hoffman, a prominent Democratic donor, raised the question of whether Carroll sued Trump, a Republican, to advance a political agenda. They had called Trump's request irrelevant to the defamation claim, and said Trump waived the argument by earlier raising and then dropping a similar request. She also has a still-pending defamation lawsuit filed in November 2019 against Trump over his denial five months earlier that the rape took place. The case is Carroll v Trump, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York Editing by Chris ReeseOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: Letter from Elon Musk, others calling for AI development pause 'lacked technical nuance'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Aaron Mcdade | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to the open letter calling for a pause on AI for one of the first times Thursday. Speaking at MIT, Altman said safety is important to OpenAI, and the letter "lacked technical nuance." The letter called for a six-month pause on AI development, and was signed by tech leaders like Elon Musk. In one of his only public responses to the open letter signed by Elon Musk and hundreds of others in the tech industry about concerns over AI, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it "lacked technical nuance about where we need the pause." The OpenAI CEO also said his company will continue to be as honest as possible about its developments with AI.

[1/3] Former U.S. President Donald Trump departs from Trump Tower to give a deposition to New York Attorney General Letitia James who sued Trump and his Trump Organization, in New York City, U.S., April 13, 2023. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, which had last September asked the Washington court for guidance on local law. Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, said in an email: "We are confident that the Second Circuit will rule in President Trump's favor and dismiss Ms. Carroll's case." Carroll, 79, has long accused Trump of stalling to keep jurors from ever hearing her case. The case is Trump et al v. Carroll, District of Columbia Court of Appeals, No.

☆ Trump lawyers say accuser in E. Jean Carroll rape-defamation case got funding from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Kevin Breuninger | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Attorneys for Donald Trump on Thursday accused writer E. Jean Carroll's lawyers of deliberately failing for months to disclose that LinkedIn co-founder and major Democratic donor Reid Hoffman helped fund her rape-defamation case against the former president. Trump's lawyers said that on Wednesday, Carroll's attorneys disclosed that Hoffman was the "primary backer" of that nonprofit group, American Future Republic. In her deposition, Carroll noted that her suit was a contingency case, meaning her attorneys only get paid if she wins the case. That funding came in September 2020, nearly a year after Carroll filed a complaint against Trump in state court, her lawyer noted. Carroll's team also challenged Trump's lawyers' requests for last-minute changes to the trial schedule.

☆ Trump again asks to delay the E. Jean Carroll rape case — this time to probe billionaire Reid Hoffman's support for the litigation
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Ashley Collman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Trump's lawyers asked to delay the E. Jean Carroll battery and defamation trial a month on Thursday. It is unclear how much of Reid's money granted through his nonprofit was used by Kaplan Hecker & Fink for the Carroll case. Seth Wenig/APOn Tuesday, Trump's lawyers asked the judge for a one-month delay to allow the "media frenzy" around his arrest to die down. Judge Kaplan has also complained about numerous attempts to delay the case in the past. But that litigation has been in limbo while appeals courts weigh in on whether Trump can even be sued in that case.

☆ LinkedIn’s Co-Founder Helped Fund the Suit Accusing Trump of Rape
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Benjamin Weiser | Charlie Savage | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and a harsh critic of former President Donald J. Trump, has helped pay for a lawsuit by E. Jean Carroll, the New York magazine writer who sued Mr. Trump for rape and defamation, according to newly filed court papers in the case. Mr. Hoffman’s support for Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit, which was first disclosed in a letter to a judge on Thursday by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, has sparked a sharp dispute in the case, which is scheduled for trial in federal court in Manhattan on April 25. Mr. Trump’s lawyers, writing to the judge, accused Ms. Carroll of concealing Mr. Hoffman’s role, which they said they only learned of this week from her lawyers. They said the disclosure raised “significant questions” about Ms. Carroll’s credibility and whether her allegations against Mr. Trump were, as he has claimed, a “hoax” brought “to advance a political agenda.”They asked for a one-month postponement so they could investigate the funding issue. The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, on Thursday evening said he would allow Mr. Trump’s lawyers the opportunity to conduct a narrow inquiry into the funding issue, but he declined to delay the case.

☆ Elon Musk says he gets 'swarmed' at parties by people wanting to discuss work, and struggles to trust people, reporter who secured rare interview says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Elon Musk gave an unexpected interview to the BBC late Tuesday. According to James Clayton, the reporter who spoke to Musk, the billionaire opened up about his personal life. Musk said he's often "swarmed" by people at parties wanting to discuss work, Clayton wrote. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest tech news and scoops — delivered daily to your inbox. Musk spoke with BBC correspondent James Clayton about his $44 billion takeover of Twitter in October and the six months that have followed including the layoffs.

☆ Elon Musk's AI ambitions for Twitter show that some of the people calling for the tech to 'pause' seem to be acting out of their own self-interest
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk-owned Twitter purchased 10,000 GPUs, apparently to get into the generative AI boom. This move goes against Musk's open-letter plea for companies to slow down AI development. It also backs up Reid Hoffman's claim that some like Musk wanted the pause so they could catch up. In December, a few months after taking full ownership of Twitter, Musk went so far as to tweet about how he cut OpenAI's access to Twitter, which was used to train OpenAI's language models. For someone who says he wants to pause AI development, Musk seems to be doing the very opposite of that.

☆ Leaked Amazon memo shows plans to reduce employee stock awards in 2025
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Leaked Amazon memo shows plans to reduce employee stock awards in 2025. The company is considering increasing the cash portion of compensation to help cushion employees against its stock price going down in the future. In other news:The late Cash App founder Bob Lee. Cash App creator Bob Lee died after a reported stabbing in San Francisco Tuesday. Silicon Valley is grieving the loss of the founder of Cash App and the former chief technology officer at Square.

☆ Slowing down A.I. advances looks like 'mistaken effort,' says LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailSlowing down A.I. advances looks like 'mistaken effort,' says LinkedIn co-founder Reid HoffmanReid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the calls for a pause in the development of artificial intelligence, the rift between Elon Musk and Sam Altman and more.

☆ LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman credits Buddha as his biggest influence
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

In an interview with The Generalist, Hoffman said he's been most influenced by Buddha. Hoffman also said in the interview that Aristotle initially inspired him to study philosophy. Hoffman, who cofounded LinkedIn, announced he was stepping down from the board of OpenAI last month. Hoffman holds a master's in philosophy from Oxford and even planned to go into academia at one point. Hoffman, who calls himself an "accidental technologist," credits his philosophical instincts as the reason he is in the industry.

☆ LinkedIn cofounder says Elon Musk has an 'it's only great if I do it' mentality when it comes to ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman told CNBC the call for an AI slow down is a "mistaken effort." He said Elon Musk has an "it's only great if I do it" mentality when it comes to ChatGPT. Both Musk and Hoffman helped found OpenAI in 2015, but Musk left the company's board of directors in 2018 and has been critical of the company ever since. Despite his longtime friendship with Musk, Hoffman said he's "much more on the path that OpenAI has gone" when it comes to developing the technology. Spokespeople for Musk, Hoffman, and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.

☆ These are the 12 best books to get up to speed on the hot new world of generative AI, according to experts
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-02 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AIScreenshot from Impromptubook.comAuthor: Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn cofounder, investor at venture firm Greylock Partners, and former board member of OpenAI. Publish Date: March 15, 2023Why it's good: As a former board member of OpenAI — one of the startups leading the generative AI charge — Hoffman has seen up close how the large language models behind generative AI tools like ChatGPT work. His book, available as a free pdf, was written with GPT-4, the newer, more powerful version of ChatGPT. The book is the first to be written by GPT-4, Hoffman said in a LinkedIn post announcing his work earlier this month. Learn more about Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI

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